the most beautiful time

Chapter 1 Cicada Slough Pain
When I was young, my favorite thing to do was to catch the cicadas before they shed their skins, put them in canned bottles, and put them under the lights at night in summer, when the adults were asleep, quietly Just watch how the worm in the bottle quietly crouches on the smooth glass and begins the most important transformation in its life.

This kind of transformation often starts from their backs. When the long gap is cracked, I can almost feel the pain of tearing between their shells and muscles. Their entire fleshy bodies are violently squeezed in the shells The ground trembled and struggled, but there was no sound. I could only hear the ticking sound of the old-fashioned clock on the wall, and the cicada's slender and long legs clawed at the smooth bottle wall, trying hard, but to no avail.The gap on the back is getting bigger and bigger, and the cicada is like a newborn baby, slowly exposing its fresh and tender skin in the silent night.But I can never wait to see how it emerges from the transparent shell, like a peeled and soft lychee.I always lie on the table and fall asleep in a daze. When I wake up, the cicada has already turned black and has wings that can fly into the sky.

Therefore, I can only imagine how the cicada peeled off its green shell under the yellowish light, struggling, wriggling, and tearing for the dream of flying in the sun. a nerve.I also suspect that they will have tears, as well as fear and hesitation. I don't know if they can fly as they want if they take off this shell, and whether they will have a bright singing voice.I also once imagined that if a certain cicada, like me when I was young, was always afraid that adults would find out the secret of wanting to run away from home, so it turned back automatically as soon as it walked out of the house in panic, would it be Will it stay in the dark soil forever, until old age?
But such fears will never come true.Every cicada, after 10 years of darkness underground, climbed out of the ground and climbed to the tall sycamore or poplar tree. The next day, for the dream of flying in less than 3 months, it took off its old clothes and walked leisurely. Discard the shell that binds the body on the tree trunk.

The price of flapping their wings and soaring like this, if cicadas have thoughts, they should understand that it is actually expensive.But every summer, they still keep going forward, without hesitation, just like every child who doesn't want to grow up, will eventually be urged by time, from erratic eyesight, cramped and flustered, to calm and unhurried expression.And this kind of growth, the pain encountered, the scars left, the pain that outsiders will never understand, all turned into sand, embedded in the body of the shell, and then turned into bright pearls through the years.

Now my younger brother born in the 90s has experienced all the confusion and confusion that I have experienced in the post-80s.He was studying a technology that even his teachers thought he would be unemployed after graduation in an unpopular vocational technical college.He entered the city from the countryside, and was rejected by the fashionable classmates around him. His teachers born in the 80s who couldn't find a way out couldn't even remember his name.When he went out, he was followed by thieves, and his mobile phone was robbed. In order to buy a new one, he saved money and squeezed out of the living expenses given by his parents. However, a month later, he fell ill due to excessive dieting. It cost hundreds of dollars to go to the hospital.In the unheated dormitory in the south, when he cried to me about the indifference of city people and the loneliness without friends, he did not bring me any comfort, because I was also anxious about work and papers.

In fact, I have always believed that when he walked out of the house and faced those disputes, noises and quarrels alone, he had a kind of flexible power that allowed him to break free from the white eyes, ridicule and blows of outsiders, just like a weak plant. Grass, can pass through cold and hard stones, and even indestructible skulls.He may abandon the precious face of the past in order to obtain a true love, or a bowl of porridge and rice, and perhaps he will still get nothing after this, but such a price is like a cicada sloughing, unless he shrinks in a dark shell all his life, otherwise, he must To be met mercilessly.

I know that he still can't forgive my indifference and ruthlessness. He hopes to get comfort and help from me again and again, but I ignore him and pretend that I don't know anything about his pain. .But I also know that when he graduates from that little-known college, has been hit by a wall in society, received all kinds of cold reception, and finally finds a job that suits him, he will understand all my indifference in the past, It's just to let him get used to the unsatisfactory temperature in this secular world in advance during the journey from campus to society.

This habit is the painful cicada slough.The price can never be escaped.

(End of this chapter)